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#25 of 100 · Coding

IDE smarts in any editor

JetBrains-level completion, navigation and refactoring for their language inside Emacs, VS Code or another editor, and several would pay for it.

14asks, each re-read
14separate threads
10of 19 years
4since 2024
2010first asked

Asks per year

’081’10’1211’1413’16’1811’201’221’243’26

What the askers want

  • Would pay21%
  • Want it local or private7%
  • Object to subscriptions0%
  • Want it open source or self-hosted7%
  • Want AI to do it0%

Share of the 14 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.

What exists on Show HN

Built, still asked for2 Show HN launches do this job, and 21 more do part of it. People still ask, so the launches are missed, unknown, or not what they want. Ask what they’re missing before you build.

Instead of: IntelliJ, PyCharm, VS Code

The idea, as matched

A language server that brings IDE-grade (JetBrains-level) completion, navigation and refactoring for a language to any editor such as VS Code, Emacs or Vim, even as a paid product.

Jev first matched 25 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 14 of 25.

Every ask, newest first

Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.

Reader’s note. Recent asks want JetBrains engines as an LSP.

  1. May 2025Would buy an IntelliJ Ultimate subscription only to obtain a JetBrains Java language server for Emacs. Read it: a comment in “Kotlin-Lsp: Kotlin Language Server and Plugin for Visual Studio Code”
  2. Apr 2025Asks why Crystal has no language server. Read it: a post: “"Why isn't there an LSP for Crystal?"”
  3. Feb 2025Would pay heavily for JetBrains refactoring and language intelligence offered as a server or add-on for other editors. Read it: a comment in “JetBrains Fleet drops support for Kotlin Multiplatform”
  4. Mar 2024Wants an open-source equivalent of IntelliJ for Java, since even extended VS Code falls short. Read it: a comment in “Building for power users”
  5. Sep 2021Wants a ReSharper-like IDE extension for F#. Read it: a comment in “A Compiler for Standard ML in Rust”
  6. Feb 2020Would pay for a plug-and-play full-featured language server with install instructions for common editors. Read it: a comment in “Langserver.org – A community-driven source for Language Server implementations”
  7. Aug 2019Wants a Haskell IDE comparable to JetBrains or Xcode to ease the steep ecosystem learning curve. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: I built a poker site with Haskell”
  8. Dec 2016Wants Emacs tooling like Go's guru and godef for Java, Ruby and JavaScript. Read it: a comment in “Gogland – Capable and Ergonomic Go IDE”
  9. May 2016Wants strong C++ autocompletion that works with Nuclide remote projects. Read it: a comment in “Two Years Open Source”
  10. Jan 2016Wants an Atom plugin for Python completion matching PyCharm, including framework model fields. Read it: a comment in “Atom text editor 1.4 released”
  11. Mar 2015Wants proper IDE support for the D language on Linux and OS X. Read it: a comment in “D 2.067 released”
  12. Aug 2014Wants an Emacs mode with PyCharm-quality jump-to-definition for Python. Read it: a comment in “Taking it to Th’emacs”
  13. Mar 2013Wants a Sublime-like editor with Eclipse-grade Java checks: unresolved dependencies at edit time and call hierarchies. Read it: a comment in “Just Use Sublime Text”
  14. Mar 2010Asks why Python has no equivalent of SLIME. Read it: a comment in “Emacs for Python Programmers #2: Virtualenv, IPython & Daemon Mode”

Building this?

Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.

See all 100How the counts work

Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own

This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.

Get your own box

$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.